Why Are We Still So Obsessed With The Heist Movie?

What makes the perfect heist movie? Is it a star-studded cast, ambitious theft, or wild plot twist? These flicks have been a formulaic goldmine for years; a good caper has always lent itself to quality entertainment, and even after seeing the same archetype played out over and over, we still aren’t tired of them. Logan Lucky, Steven Soderbergh‘s latest film, is living proof of our endless hype for the heist. So what gives? Why haven’t we kicked this kind of movie to the curb? There’s a joy in the familiarity of it all, and with the evolution of the genre, there’s been a development of respect for audience members. To understand this better, we have to jump back to the beginning.

The heist flick rose to fame in the 1950s, but we’d already been enjoying a slew of stories involving thievery, scams, and capers since the 1930s. The explicit shift to centering an entire film on the heist, which gained notoriety with films like Rififi, The Killing, and Asphalt Jungle, cemented the subgenre as one of our most beloved kind of crime film. The premise is simple; plan the heist, do the heist, and deal with the consequences of said heist. There are often bumps, twists, and turns along the way, and that makes it all the more thrilling. Genre classics like Ocean’s 11, The Italian Job, and The Great Train Robbery ensured that heist films were a viable box office endeavor, and they’ve been part of the zeitgeist ever since.

As we became comfortable with the three-act formula and knew what to expect from a heist flick, filmmakers rose to the occasion. Directors put comedic spins on heist films and called them capers, allowing us to laugh at the absurdity of a group of fairly inept individuals attempting to pull off such a massive robbery, and some flicks even started leaving out certain acts to allow us to fill in the blanks and create a more compelling, unique story. The 90s saw another uptick in fresh heist films; Quentin Tarantino‘s Reservoir Dogstells the story in a nonlinear fashion, but the components we know and love – a robbery gone wrong, betrayal of a group member, massive plot twist – are kept intact. Michael Mann‘s 1995 film Heatwastes no time at all – it begins with the heist of an armored car and compels us to keep watching as our career thieves continue down this dangerous path. 2001’s Ocean Elevenremake, which kicked off a successful, Soderbergh-helmed franchise, veered away from the doom and gloom of its predecessors and made every moment energized and fun. There have been a slew of quirky spins on the formula in the last ten years (many not worth noting), but when it’s done right, it’s a quintessential cinematic experience.

2017 has seen heists go large and loud once more; over the past 8 months, we’ve seen a remake of Going in Style, an expansion of the “scene in a heist movie where the deal goes bad” in Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, and a music-fueled, big-hearted take on the genre with Edgar Wright‘s Baby Driver, a film that often feels like a love-letter to heist movies past. It’s no surprise, then, that Logan Lucky is being lauded as something of a “redneck Ocean’s Eleven“, and why it works so well – it’s a tried-and-true method. Why fix it if it isn’t broken?

No matter how you spin it, the heist movie is a damn-near failsafe method. It may get muddled in the protest with a faulty script or mediocre cast, but when it’s self-aware and understands the formula, it’s undoubtedly a crowd-pleaser every single time. It’s likely that plot twists, shoot-outs, backstabbing, and quippy one-liners will never go out of style – and that’s probably why the heist movie won’t either.